A review on the latest trend of solar pavements in urban environment

Renewable Energy has evolved into an integral part of the future Energy Landscape. Their unique feature of being perpetual and consumed close to the loads and thus within the urban environment, leads to new ways of their integration. Solar Collector Pavements are the latest trend of integrating Renewables within the urban mesh by creating operational and efficient sources of energy for different applications. Solar collector pavements harvest energy from sun to provide ancillary services within the smart city concept. They alleviate the city environment from the thermal capacity by storing energy (thermal or electrical) and when necessary use it to cover buildings’ thermal loads, power lights, street signs or even cover electric bicycles needs. This paper reviews the latest progress on solar collector pavement technology and categorizes the different technologies of this trend by their potential applications in the urban environment. It also reviews and sum up the features of each application and the barriers that may hinder the solar pavement approach at the time. It also presents the related pilots around the world and discusses what steps need to be taken before the trend gets mainstream.